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I woke up to that less bright softer light coming in the small window in our little cottage bedroom and taps of rain on its glass panes and the roof above. David was sitting in his bed drawing on his sketch pad, noticing I was awake.<\/p>\nI woke up to that less bright softer light coming in the small window in our little cottage bedroom and taps of rain on its glass panes and the roof above. David was sitting in his bed drawing on his sketch pad, noticing I was awake.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s raining\u201d, he said, \u201cI don\u2019t think we\u2019re going to go to the beach. Are you going to run anyway?\u201d<\/p>\n
I swung out of bed and went to our window that looked out onto our big backyard through the blurring water on the window. The sky was gray and the grass and all the trees and bushes were all green and shiny with water.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d run every day since the first morning we\u2019d been here, both to the beach and back. Yesterday was the first day I had done the whole mile run down Longnook Road, without having to walk even once. That felt REALLY good, in both my body AND my mind. Only big kids can run a WHOLE mile I figured!<\/p>\n
I hadn\u2019t thought to bring my raincoat on our trip and mom had let David and I pretty much decide what we wanted to bring, just wanting to make sure we brought a pair of long pants and and a long-sleeve shirt \u201cwith a collar\u201d in case we wanted to go out to dinner at a \u201cnice\u201d restaurant.<\/p>\n
\u201cNah\u201d, I finally said to his running question, still peering out the window. It felt cozy to be in the cottage in the rain, with its different rooms and lots of windows looking outside.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wonder what the Kitzilla\u2019s are doing?\u201d David asked. That was the nickname we had given the cats of the woman that owned the place. David just LOVED playing with the cats. Sometimes he would follow them around the yard, and then when he stopped following them, they\u2019d follow HIM around. They WERE pretty fun because they all liked to play, and the lady didn\u2019t really play with them so they would always hang out with us. We\u2019d poke them and box with them, though they all had sharp claws and could scratch our hands and arms up pretty good. Mine were kind of scratched up and David\u2019s were REALLY scratched up.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo what are you going to do?\u201d David asked, \u201cRead your book?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know\u201d, I said, not really feeling interested in doing that today. I\u2019d finished reading Doctor No and wasn\u2019t quite ready to start Goldfinger. I\u2019d seen that movie on TV. Was I just going to be bored? If I were back home I would set up and maybe play one of my Avalon Hill games, but I hadn\u2019t thought to bring any with me. Damn!<\/p>\n
But what if I could make one, I thought. Maybe a game like the Battle of the Bulge, because that was my favorite right now. David had all the colored markers. Both he and mom had all the sketch pads with paper I could use to make the map. We had that white cardboard pizza box from last night. The bottom was all greasy but the top was clean and I could cut it up and make units.<\/p>\n
I imagined a valley between lots of hills with a big river running down it, like the Rhine or the Meuse. The attacking side, maybe the Germans, are trying to attack down the river valley to get to and capture the big port city at the other end where the big river meets the sea. The defending side, the Americans, are trying to keep that important port city from being captured and cutting their army in two. What would make it interesting was that the river would be hard to cross, except at maybe three or four bridges across it. Then the challenge, both attacking and defending, would be how much of your forces to keep on either side of the river, because it would be hard to get across it except at those two or three key bridges. I decided to call it the \u201cLonheim Gap\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m going to make my own wargame\u201d, I said to David, knowing he\u2019d be impressed, and he was.<\/p>\n
\u201cWHAA\u2026\u201d, he said, \u201cYou\u2019re kidding!\u201d I shook my head and smiled. That was exactly what I was hoping he would say. Yep, I thought, I had figured out how to run a mile, now I was going to figure out how to make my own wargame, with a map and units, basically using the rules from Battle of the Bulge and the game\u2019s Combat Results Table that I really liked.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m going to need four sheets from your sketch pad\u201d, I said, turning from the window to look at him.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know\u201d, he said, looking at me, \u201cYou\u2019re going to owe me!\u201d He was always saying that these days when I asked him to do something for me. Like he could get me to do something for him sometimes when he wanted it, because I owed him, but he hadn\u2019t asked me to do anything yet. I think maybe he just liked having his big brother owe him, like I wasn\u2019t totally in charge all the time.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, yeah, yeah\u201d, I said, nodding back at him. So he ripped off four sheets from his pad and gave them to me.<\/p>\n
I took the sheets into the kitchen which had the best table to work on. I put them down next to each other and looked at them. I could tape them together, but how would I make the hexes on the board? Mom had brought a ruler, so I could measure out and draw a grid on each piece of paper. But that would only be a square grid, not hexagons, and all my Avalon Hill games, at least the ones that didn\u2019t take place at sea, had hexagons. That had me worried that maybe I couldn\u2019t do it.<\/p>\n
We hadn\u2019t heard anything from mom this morning, so we figured she was in her room. Maybe sleeping, but since we\u2019d been here she was getting up really early, probably because we didn\u2019t have a TV for her to stay up late and watch. So I walked through the bathroom to the door on the other side of it that went to her room. I knocked on the door and she said \u201ccome on in\u201d.<\/p>\n
She was sitting on HER bed drawing on her sketch pad just like David was. She also had that book she was now reading, \u201cThe Feminine Mystique\u201d, whatever that was, next to her. Looking more like a kid than a grownup, she was wearing her big floppy Michigan sweatshirt, dark blue with yellow letters like mine, and then what looked like gray gym shorts and bare feet. Her hair looked messier than it usually did.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow are you guys doing?\u201d she asked, \u201cEnjoying the rainy day? I sure am!\u201d She turned her head back and forth to look out all her windows. She had SEVEN of them, as many as the whole rest of the house!<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re okay\u201d, I said, \u201cCan I borrow your ruler?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSure\u201d, she said, nodding, but now looking at what she was drawing on her sketch pad, but pointing at the desk across the room, \u201cIt\u2019s on the desk.\u201d I grabbed the ruler, said thanks, and left her room out the door to the bathroom I\u2019d come in.<\/p>\n
As I walked through the bathroom, I noticed that the counter around the sink had square tiles, but they weren\u2019t put together in a square grid. They were put together like bricks, where each row of tiles were in a line, but the row above it was offset so each tile on that second row was above the space between the two tiles below. Even though they were still squares and not hexagons, each square had six squares next to it, so it really wasn\u2019t any different than having hexagons. I got really excited. If I could figure out how to use the ruler to help me draw a brick pattern of squares on my four sheets of paper, I could make my board.<\/p>\n
I returned to the big kitchen table and looked at my sheets of paper. David was still in our bedroom, drawing, and listening to side two of the Beatles \u201cRubber Soul\u201d album, and I could still hear it pretty good in the kitchen, at least enough to hear the melody. I had heard the record at least a hundred times since \u201cSanta\u201d got it for David and I for Christmas, and I knew all the words enough to just hear them in my mind if not from the record player. It was a sad voice of one of the Beatles, though I couldn\u2019t tell whether it was John, Paul or George that was singing. If RINGO sang, you could definitely tell it was him, but not this voice\u2026<\/p>\n
\nIs there anybody going to listen to my story
All about the girl who came to stay?
She’s the kind of girl you want so much it makes you sorry
Still you don’t regret a single day<\/p>\nAh, girl (breathing in)
Girl, girl<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nThe sad words drifted through my mind as I started at the bottom of the piece of paper and put the ruler against each of the long sides and then marked every half inch\u2026<\/p>\n
\nWhen I think of all the times I’ve tried so hard to leave her
She will turn to me and start to cry
And she promises the earth to me and I believe her
After all this time I don’t know why<\/p>\nAh, girl (breathing in)
Girl, girl<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nLuckily David\u2019s pieces of that thicker drawing paper were only nine by twelve, so the ruler reached all the way across so I could trace lines every half inch the whole way across. Then that part of the song came where the other Beatles sang \u201ctit tit tit\u201d over and over in the background while the one singing the words sang that part where she was doing things he didn\u2019t like\u2026<\/p>\n
\nShe’s the kind of girl who puts you down
When friends are there you feel a fool
When you say she’s looking good
She acts as if it’s understood she’s cool<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nIt was yet another girlfriend problems song. Seemed like half the songs we listened to were like that. So as I wondered why you would even have a girlfriend like that, I put marks every quarter of an inch on the shorter nine-inch edges, and he went back to his sad singing\u2026<\/p>\n
\nWas she told when she was young
That pain would lead to pleasure?
Did she understand it when they said
That a man must break his back to earn his day of leisure?
Will she still believe it when he’s dead?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nI had figured out what to do to get my squares to look like the tiles in the bathroom. I had to draw each vertical line but only between every OTHER pair of horizontal lines it crossed. And then when I lined up the ruler to the next set of edge marks, a quarter-inch over, I had to draw THAT crossing line just between each two horizontal lines that I didn\u2019t draw a line between before. That way I made squares, but arranged like bricks, like square hexagons.<\/p>\n
While I did that, my favorite song on the record played. I liked it because it was louder and faster, like the guy singing had finally figured stuff out, and I sang along like I had finally figured stuff out too\u2026<\/p>\n
\nI’m looking through you, where did you go
I thought I knew you, what did I know<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nAnd then with the cool harmony\u2026<\/p>\n
\nYou don’t look different, but you have changed
I’m looking through you, you’re not the same<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nIt was one of those songs that didn\u2019t have the chorus until after the second verse. A lot of songs had the chorus after EVERY verse, like that \u201cGirl\u201d one just before. That song on the first side, \u201cNorwegian Wood\u201d, didn\u2019t really have a chorus at all and was more like just singing a poem.<\/p>\n
As the words washed through my mind and I sang and swayed and bounced my heels to the beat, I made my pattern of square bricks on the piece of paper. When I was done I held it up and examined it carefully and it looked really good. It felt really good too, like I\u2019d run a mile with my mind.<\/p>\n
As the rest of the songs played on side two of the Rubber Soul album, I did the other three pieces of the thick paper the same way. That \u201cRun For Your Life\u201d song played at the end, except it was the Beatles singing it this time instead of Johnny Rivers. The words were nasty, but the tune was so snappy and cool that I couldn\u2019t help but bounce my head and heals and sing along, and imagine how confident a guy must be so he could tell some girl, even his girlfriend, that he wouldn\u2019t let her cheat on him\u2026<\/p>\n
\nYou better run for your life if you can little girl
Hide your head in the sand little girl
Catch you with another man that\u2019s the end
Little girl<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nI wondered if that\u2019s how some kids were in junior high, or maybe regular high school.<\/p>\n
When the song finished David put on our other new Beatles album, \u201cYesterday and Today\u201d. I put together my four pieces of paper with the tiled squares on them and I was happy to see it worked out really well, the half squares on the right edge of the pieces of paper on the left side matched up with the half squares of the pieces of paper on the left edge of the right side to make whole squares. Though they were squares and not hexagons, they\u2019d work just like hexagons with six others surrounding each one. And the edge between the two pieces on the bottom and the two on top worked just right too.<\/p>\n
It was quiet for a minute in the bedroom while David put another album on the record player, the first side of our other new Beatles album, \u201cYesterday and Today\u201d, that David got for his birthday and we\u2019d listened to a bunch of times too. This album was interesting, because even though side two had the usual girlfriend problem songs, the ones on side one were different, mostly about other people or other stuff than girlfriend problems.<\/p>\n
The first song was \u201cDrive My Car\u201d, which was kind of a girlfriend problem one, but different because it was about the movies and Hollywood, and the woman said she MIGHT be his girlfriend if he would be her driver and drive her around in her car. I guess if you\u2019re a moviestar you\u2019re supposed to have someone else drive you around and they should wear a uniform and one of those officer hats and maybe sunglasses\u2026<\/p>\n
\nAsked a girl what she wanted to be
She said, “Baby, can’t you see?
I wanna be famous, a star of the screen
But you can do something in between”<\/p>\n“Baby, you can drive my car
Yes, I’m gonna be a star
Baby, you can drive my car
And maybe I’ll love you”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nAs I listened I realized that I hadn\u2019t brought any Scotch Tape that I could use to put my map pieces together, but I searched around in the kitchen and found some masking tape in the big cupboard with a broom, dustpan and other cleaning stuff. So luckily, I was able to tape my four pieces of paper together that would make my gameboard. Once I had one big empty board of squares, now was the fun part, putting all the terrain on, but I needed David\u2019s colored markers.<\/p>\n
The song continued and the guy decides he will be her driver, I guess because he wants her to be his girlfriend. She\u2019s happy that he\u2019ll do it, but tells him she actually doesn\u2019t have a car yet. That was the joke I guess, or what Stuart would say was the \u201ckicker\u201d\u2026<\/p>\n
\nI told that girl I could start right away
when she said, “Listen, babe, I got something to say
I got no car and it’s breaking my heart
But I found a driver and that’s a start”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nI peeked in the door of our bedroom. David was sitting at the head of his bed with two pillows behind his back, his knees up to hold his sketch pad against his thighs as he drew. His pencil stopped moving and he looked at me.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeeees?\u201d he asked, drawing the word out like he was in charge.<\/p>\n
\u201cI need to borrow your markers\u201d, I said, \u201cThe black one, blue one, brown one and green one.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat are you making?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cA mapboard for the game I\u2019m making\u201d, I said. He nodded, thinking about that for a minute. The Beatle guy\u2019s voice from the record player sounded like he was half asleep\u2026<\/p>\n
\nEverybody seems to think I’m lazy
I don’t mind, I think they’re crazy
Runnin’ everywhere at such a speed
‘Til they find there’s no need (there’s no need)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nIt was the perfect rainy day song, at least a rainy day when you were cozy indoors.<\/p>\n
\u201cOkay\u2026 but before you take any of them\u201d, he said, like he was giving me instructions, \u201cMake sure you draw everything in pencil before you color it in. If after you draw stuff you need to change it, you can erase the pencil but not the markers.\u201d Like he knew better than I did and I was the stupid little kid. I had to say something.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo\u201d, I said, \u201cMy little brother is the big expert now?\u201d He did a big smile.<\/p>\n
\u201cYour little brother\u201d, he said, his eyes twinkling, \u201cDoes a lot of drawing and made that mistake many times. I don\u2019t want you to mess something up and then want more of my paper.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOkay\u201d, I said, nodding my head and making a silly face, \u201cYou weaseled your way out of that one pretty well\u2026 but watch yourself!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI always do\u201d, he said nodding and his eyes still twinkling, finally turning his head from me and back to his drawing and said, \u201cOh\u2026 and you owe me\u2026 again!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, yeah, yeah\u201d, I said back to him again and went back out to the kitchen to my gameboard with no terrain on it yet. I looked at it for a couple minutes and thought about what kind of terrain I wanted.<\/p>\n
\u201cNowhere Man\u201d was the next song on the album. It was a different sort of song for the Beatles because it wasn\u2019t about them or some girlfriend, but some total other guy. Most songs had a chorus where you sang the same words each time, but in this one they were different\u2026<\/p>\n
\nNowhere man, please listen
You don’t know what you’re missing
Nowhere man
The world is at your command<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nAnd in the second\u2026<\/p>\n
\nNowhere man, don’t worry
Take your time, don’t hurry
Leave it all
‘Til somebody else lends you a hand<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nWhenever I heard them sing that these days, I guess since mom and dad got divorced, it felt like they were singing it to me, like I was the nowhere man. It also made me think about mom, because she was always asking David and I to sing it. I mean I liked to sing, but not on COMMAND, from my MOM of all people.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s mom up to?\u201d I heard him ask from the bedroom. I guess it reminded David too.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s in there sitting on her bed drawing something on her sketch pad\u201d, I said, then realizing that was exactly what David was doing too.<\/p>\n
I stared at my blank \u201cboard\u201d of squares arranged like hexagons. I needed a river of course, because that was the main thing that went down the middle of the board and made the gap in the mountains. But should it be between hexes like in D-Day or in the middle of hexes like in Battle of the Bulge and Waterloo. My main river, the \u201cLonheim\u201d, was going to be a big one, like the Rhine or the Mississippi, that you could only cross at the bridges. Then maybe there would be some little rivers coming off of it that you could cross like you did in Battle of the Bulge. So I decided to make them in the middle of the hex, like Battle of the Bulge.<\/p>\n
Then I needed to decide whether to have mountain hexes, like D-Day and Battle of the Bulge, or ridges like Waterloo. The ridges looked kind of cool on the Waterloo board, so I decided to go with them. They worked kind of like rivers, except you were only doubled in defense if you were attacked from a ridge hex and you were on the top side of it, not the bottom side.<\/p>\n
Forest hexes would be green, of course, and city hexes would have the criss-crossed black lines and the roads would be the double black lines.<\/p>\n
The next song was another really different one for the Beatles, \u201cDoctor Robert\u201d, about some doctor guy, and I wondered if it was another \u201cdrug\u201d song like \u201cAlong Comes Mary\u201d, because that song talked about \u201cmy empty cup is as sweet as the punch\u201d\u2026<\/p>\n
\nIf you’re down, he’ll pick you up
Doctor Robert
Take a drink from his special cup
Doctor Robert<\/p>\nHe’s a man you must believe
Helping anyone in need
No one can succeed like
Doctor Robert<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nAs I wondered about that I started to draw my map, in pencil as David suggested. I wanted the attackers to come from the top of the map down either side of the river and try to capture the big port city, Port Lonheim, on the sea at the end of the river at the bottom of the map.<\/p>\n
First I drew the main river down a squiggly line of squares from the very top of the map down to the bottom where it went into the sea, which was at the very bottom of the map next to the bottom edge. The sea squares would be completely blue.<\/p>\n
That \u201cYesterday\u201d song was next with those sad lyrics that reminded me about before mom and dad divorced and felt like it was about me\u2026<\/p>\n
\nYesterday
All my troubles seemed so far away
Now it looks as though they’re here to stay
Oh, I believe in yesterday<\/p>\nSuddenly
I’m not half the man I used to be
There’s a shadow hanging over me
Oh, yesterday came suddenly<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nSo trying not to think about all that too much, I drew the ridges, which were along both of the long sides of the board and made the hills on either side of the river valley, the river valley that was the \u201cgap\u201d. I made some smaller rivers that flowed from the ridges and hills on the sides of the board down to the big river. I did forests in different areas, most on the ridges, but even a few squares of forests here and there along the river. The music flowed through me as I worked with my pencil\u2026<\/p>\n
\nThey’re gonna put me in the movies
They’re gonna make a big star out of me
We’ll make a film about a man that’s sad and lonely
And all I gotta do is act naturally<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nThe Beatles guy singing this one sounded different. From reading the album cover it looked like it was Ringo singing. It was about Hollywood I figured, like \u201cDrive My Car\u201d, and kind of a silly song, but the ones Ringo sang usually were\u2026<\/p>\n
\nWell, I’ll bet you I’m gonna be a big star
Might win an Oscar you can never tell
The movie’s gonna make me a big star
‘Cause I can play the part so well<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nIt was kind of hard to see how all the terrain I\u2019d penciled in worked together, because it was all just in pencil on the white sheets. But I was glad I did it that way because at one point I realized that I wanted a bigger river valley so I had to do some erasing and make a couple of my ridges not come so close to the big main river. Also I had a lot of fun making all the little rivers that flowed into the big one, so I made too many, and I ended up erasing some of them too\u2026<\/p>\n
\nWell, I hope you come to see me in the movie
Then I know that you will plainly see
The biggest fool that’s ever hit the big time
And all I gotta do is act naturally<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nI felt like the guy in the song, at least the \u201cbiggest fool\u201d part, but I kept working. Still doing everything in pencil, next I put in the cities. First the big port, \u201cPort Lonheim\u201d, at the bottom of the map where my big river came to the sea, which I did as three city squares because it was big, two on one side of the big river and the third on the other side, with a bridge crossing the river connecting them. Then I add two more smaller one-square cities up along the river, because that\u2019s where cities usually were in the real world, at least on the real maps and gameboard maps I\u2019d looked at. Then I added a couple more cities on the right side of the river up on the ridges, figuring the left side of the river, which had more forests, would be the countryside part.<\/p>\n
There was quiet from our bedroom as David flipped the album to side two\u2026<\/p>\n
\nYou tell me that you’ve got everything you want
And your bird can sing, but you don’t get me
You don’t get me<\/p>\nYou say you’ve seen seven wonders
And your bird is green, but you can’t see me
You can’t see me<\/p>\nWhen your prized possessions
Start to weigh you down
Look in my direction
I’ll be ’round, I’ll be ’round<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nThis song was kind of like \u201cDrive My Car\u201d, I thought as I finished drawing my roads on my map, where he wanted her to be his girlfriend, but she was too busy worrying about something else, her pet bird in this case.<\/p>\n
There was one road from the port city that ran along the right side of the river all the way up and off the top edge of the board and another from the port along the sea at the bottom edge of the map to the board edges. I figured my bridges across the big river would be where the cities were along the river, because that seemed to be the way it was in the real world. I put a lot of roads on the right side of the river, where the other cites up on ridges were, but only one on the left side of the board, the more countryside part.<\/p>\n
So again I kind of looked at the whole penciled gameboard together, as I listened to the next song\u2026<\/p>\n
\nIf I needed someone to love
You’re the one that I’d be thinking of
If I needed someone<\/p>\nIf I had some more time to spend
Then I guess I’d be with you, my friend
If I needed someone<\/p>\nHad you come some other day
Then it might not have been like this
But you see now I’m too much in love<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nI thought about Molly, and wondered if I\u2019d ever been \u201cin love\u201d with her or her with me. I didn\u2019t think so, because we were best friends and none of the girlfriends the Beatles sang about sounded like they were THEIR best friends. They sounded more like their worst enemies.<\/p>\n
I erased a few more things and made other changes that I thought made the map more interesting. The defenders would have more trouble reinforcing their units on the left side of the river because more of the roads were on the right side. But that would also be true for the attackers too. So a big challenge for both sides in the initial setup would be how many of their units to put on each side of the river, since there were only a few bridges across the river to help reinforce one side or the other. I figured I\u2019d make the defenders set up first, so that the attackers would have the advantage of setting up second, like in Battle of the Bulge where the attacking Germans set up after the Americans.<\/p>\n
It all looked pretty good, so as the music continued to flow through my mind I started using David\u2019s markers to color in all my terrain\u2026<\/p>\n
\nWe can work it out
We can work it out<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nI started to color in the rivers first, but I realized that I had to color in the roads and the bridges first to make the bridges look like they were on top of the rivers, not in them. Though the roads in the Battle of the Bulge and Waterloo games were double black lines, which looked really neat, they were a lot of work to draw so I did my roads like they did in the Afrika Korps game, except I did black lines instead of red ones. And then the harmony part\u2026<\/p>\n
\nLife is very short, and there\u2019s no time
For fussing and fighting my friend<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nI\u2019d heard people say, I guess really only grownups, that \u201clife was short\u201d, but for me, that just seemed so impossibly wrong. It felt like forever since as far back as I could remember being three, and I would still be an official kid for almost that long into the future. But still, \u201cno time for fussing and fighting\u201d, made me sad, thinking about mom and dad\u2026<\/p>\n
\nI have always thought that it’s a crime
So I will ask you once again<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nI guess that was another feeling thing, like saying you wanted to \u201ckill\u201d somebody. I mean, fussing and fighting wasn\u2019t REALLY a crime, at least the kind of fighting like arguments and stuff, but I got that it could FEEL like a crime.<\/p>\n
I did all the ridges before I did the forests, because there were a couple places where I wanted forests on the same square where there was a ridge. And finally the cities, I did those with David\u2019s special black marker that made a very thin line, drawing a little grid in each city square. When it was done it looked pretty good, though the four pieces of paper taped together didn\u2019t lie completely flat like the board of my games did, but good enough I figured.<\/p>\n
So next was making the units. The units for my Avalon Hill games were made out of thick cardboard, and all their symbols and numbers were printed in black on a shiny colored surface, either pink, blue or green. In my World War Two games the Germans were usually pink and the Allies blue. In my Napoleon game the French were blue, the British pink and the Prussians, which were the Germans back then, were green.<\/p>\n
The next song was a Ringo one. They always sounded different. Growlier\u2026<\/p>\n
\nWhat goes on in your heart?
What goes on in your mind?
You are tearing me apart
When you treat me so unkind
What goes on in your mind?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\u201cTearing me apart\u201d. Not for real, but another feeling thing. And then there was this\u2026<\/p>\n
\nIt’s so easy for a girl like you to li
Tell me why<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nYeah. I wanted to know too why it would be easy for a girl to lie, and a girl like what? One that was super pretty? That all the boys wanted to be their girlfriend? There was that \u201cCherish\u201d song by the Association that I told dad about and he liked, where they talked about boys lying to girls they wanted to be their girlfriend\u2026<\/p>\n
\nI could say I need you but then you’d realize
That I want you just like a thousand other guys
Who’d say they loved you with all the rest of their lies<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nAll this boyfriend girlfriend and \u201clove\u201d stuff. It all seemed so complicated. I wondered if all this kind of stuff was going to happen in junior high at Tappan, as I pulled the pizza box from last night out of the trash can in the kitchen, that I would use to make my units.<\/p>\n
Then it was the last song on the record, \u201cDaytripper\u201d, both David and my favorite, with that great \u201cder der der\u201d guitar part at the beginning\u2026<\/p>\n
\nShe was a day tripper
One way ticket, yeah
It took me so long to find out
And I found out<\/p>\nTried to please her
She only played one night stands
Tried to please her
She only played one night stands, now<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nI mean David and I had no idea what a \u201cday tripper\u201d really was, and what a \u201cone night stand\u201d was. It made sense that he couldn\u2019t trust her, like mom said she couldn\u2019t trust dad anymore. So it was another one of those many Beatles girlfriend problems songs. David and I sometimes added a silly line at the end\u2026<\/p>\n
\nShe was a day tripper
Sunday driver, yeah
It took me so long to find out
And I found out
I threw her out!<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nI finally checked out the pizza box from last night. It was made out of a shiny white cardboard that was thicker than paper but not super thick. It would have been better if it were just a bit more thick, like the cardboard for the units in my real games, but after searching around more, I figured that was the best I was going to do. The bottom of the pizza box was all oily and dirty from the pizza, but the top part was mostly okay. And luckily, the drawer in the kitchen with all the forks, spoons and knives had a pair of scissors in it too that could cut the cardboard.<\/p>\n
So I cut out a big rectangle of cardboard from the top of the box and then drew a grid on it with a pencil so the lines were a half inch apart, the size of the squares on my gameboard. Then I would have to draw in each square a smaller rectangle where I\u2019d put the symbol for that kind of unit, either, the \u201cX\u201d for infantry, the oval for armor, and the \u201cX\u201d over the oval for armored infantry.<\/p>\n
There was a pause in the music. I thought for a while about whether to do parachute, cavalry, and headquarters units. The allies parachute units were pretty cool in the D-Day game, because you could parachute them behind the German lines. The Americans had lots of parachute units in Battle of the Bulge, but they didn\u2019t actually parachute. So I decided not to have any of those. The Germans and Russians in Stalingrad had cavalry units, but they weren\u2019t really different from infantry and armor, and couldn\u2019t do anything special, so I decided not to make any of those. And in most of the games, if they even had headquarter units, they had zero combat factors so they were kind of worthless and stupid. In a real war they were super important because that was where the generals were who ran things. In D-Day, though they had an attack factor of \u201c0\u201d, at least they had a defense factor of \u201c1\u201d and they had a zone of control, so they weren\u2019t totally worthless. But since that was where the generals were I decided to have them in my game.<\/p>\n
Then I heard that very familiar music again from the record player\u2026<\/p>\n
\nYou tell me that you’ve got everything you want
And your bird can sing, but you don’t get me
You don’t get me<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nDavid was playing side two of \u201cYesterday and Today\u201d again. That was definitely his favorite side of the record. For me it was more fifty-fifty. I agreed \u201cDay Tripper” was the best song, but side one had \u201cDrive My Car\u201d and \u201cI\u2019m Only Sleeping\u201d, both I liked, particularly on a rainy day like this one.<\/p>\n
Under the rectangle with the symbol on each unit, I\u2019d put the numbers for the attack, defense and movement factors with a dash between each. Since all my units were going to be white, I\u2019d have to use different colored markers to draw the box with the symbol and the factors for each unit below it. But when I used David\u2019s red marker to try to do the box, symbol and factors for the first unit I realized that the line it made was too thick and I couldn\u2019t fit the three numbers with dashes between them in the little half-inch square. So I ended up using red and blue pens instead, which worked better, but it was still hard to get the three factor numbers – attack, defense and movement – all in a line with dashes between them under the box with the symbol in those half-inch units. So I ended up just having a single combat factor, the same for attacking and defending like in Battle of the Bulge, so that worked better only having to put TWO numbers and ONE dash on each unit.<\/p>\n
The words of the songs I now knew by heart went through my mind without me hardly even noticing them, except once in a while when some words poked at feelings inside me\u2026<\/p>\n
\nNowhere man, please listen
You don’t know what you’re missing<\/p>\nSuddenly
I’m not half the man I used to be<\/p>\nIt’s so easy for a girl like you to lie
Tell me why<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nI used David\u2019s blue pen to make the American units. Mostly infantry, but some armor and armored infantry too. I used his red pen to make the German units. Twice as many as the Americans, since they were attacking. I made the German units half infantry, and the other half armored infantry and armor, because they were the attackers and that\u2019s the way it was in Battle of the Bulge. I made the American units mostly infantry. When I had written all the symbols and factors in red or blue pen in all the squares on my cardboard grid, I used the scissors to cut the units up into their individual little squares.<\/p>\n
Then I made my combat results table on a regular piece of plain white paper. I drew a grid again with the ruler and a black pen, but did the lines three-quarters of an inch apart, seven lines across and twelve down to make a grid with 66 boxes. To the left of each row I put the numbers, \u201c1\u201d through \u201c6\u201d for the different dice rolls. On top of each column I put the odds, \u201c1 to 6\u201d, \u201c1 to 5\u201d, \u201c1 to 4\u201d, all the way to \u201c6 to 1\u201d. I decided to use the Battle of the Bulge results table because it didn\u2019t have so many dice rolls where all the units got eliminated on one side or the other. I couldn\u2019t remember ALL the results but knew most of them and could figure out what the others should be given where the ones I remembered were in the grid.<\/p>\n
I had been working all morning as the rain kept falling outside, and I was getting hungry for lunch, so I made myself a baloney and cheese sandwich with mustard. As I ate it I looked at my completed table and realized that I didn\u2019t have any dice! How could I play my game without one? Such a stupid little thing to mess up all my work!<\/p>\n
I was surprised when I heard the door between the bathroom and mom\u2019s bedroom open and she came through the bathroom into the kitchen. She looked at me with my mouth full of food chewing and grinned.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat are they serving for lunch?\u201d she asked, like we were at some restaurant or something. With my mouth still full of half chewed food, I mumbled what was in the sandwich I had made for myself.<\/p>\n
Still grinning, she nodded and said, \u201cI\u2019d love one of those\u2026 and some chips and a Tab.\u201d She didn\u2019t even tell me not to talk with food in my mouth.<\/p>\n
I looked at her like I wasn\u2019t sure if she really meant that or she was just joking. I mean I\u2019d made sandwiches before for a picnic and she ate one, but I couldn\u2019t remember her ever asking me to make a sandwich specially for her.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou want me to make you a sandwich?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019re offering\u201d, she said, her eyes twinkling.<\/p>\n
\u201cI guess so\u201d, I said, still not sure this was really happening.<\/p>\n
\u201cThanks!\u201d she said, then looking at my game board and units on the kitchen table asked, \u201cWhat\u2019s all this?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI made my own wargame\u201d, I said, like it really wasn\u2019t a big deal even though I thought it really was and hoped she would think so too, even though I was still feeling like I messed up by not making the squares on the board big enough. She looked at it closer.<\/p>\n
\u201cWow\u201d, she said, \u201cThat\u2019s really impressive, Coolie!\u201d Yeah, I thought, if only I\u2019d made my squares bigger.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat inspired you to do that?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know\u201d, I said, even though I DID know, \u201cI was bored and felt like playing one of my games, but I didn\u2019t bring any so I decided to make one.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell\u201d, she said, \u201cMaybe you\u2019ll grow up and become a top game designer, get rich, and buy your dear old mom a cottage of her own on the Cape!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah maybe\u201d, I said, not unhappy at the idea that I was a good game designer, \u201cBut I need a dice to play the game, and since we didn\u2019t bring any games, I don\u2019t have one!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHmmm\u201d, she said, thinking, \u201cWhy don\u2019t you put pieces of paper with the numbers one to six written on them into a cup and then pull one out each time you want to roll the dice.\u201d<\/p>\n
I wondered why I hadn\u2019t thought of that, though picking a piece of paper out of a cup wasn\u2019t nearly as cool as rolling a dice.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere you go, problem solved\u201d, she said, making her biggest smile, \u201cI just earned my sandwich. Now let\u2019s work on world peace!\u201d<\/p>\n
David had come out of our bedroom and looked at her like she was some strange alien being.<\/p>\n
She looked back at him and said, \u201cHey Mister D!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve been in your room all morning\u201d, he said, like he couldn\u2019t figure out why.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know\u201d, she said, her eyebrow raising and her eyes twinkling, \u201cI\u2019m enjoying just lounging around on my bed in my big gorgeous yet cozy bedroom enjoying the rainy day. Reading my book, doing some sketching, but mostly a whole lot of nothing.\u201d She laughed. That was good to hear and I hadn\u2019t heard her laugh like that in a long time. It was when she talked without laughing or smiling that I would get worried.<\/p>\n
She pointed at me and said, \u201cI\u2019ll be ready for my lunch whenever it\u2019s ready!\u201d She pointed behind her and said, \u201cI\u2019ll be in my room! Thanks!\u201d She turned around, blew David a kiss, and then walked back through the bathroom and through the doorway to her room on the other side and closed it behind her.<\/p>\n
David looked at me, worried, and said, \u201cMom\u2019s acting strange. Is she okay?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think so\u201d, I said, \u201cFor the first time in a long time.\u201d He shook his head like it didn\u2019t make sense.<\/p>\n
But then he grinned and said, \u201cI\u2019ll have a baloney and cheese sandwich too, but no mustard\u2026 and a Tab.\u201d I looked at him like what was he talking about.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou owe me\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe so, but you didn\u2019t even ask\u201d, I said, \u201cYou deserve a spanking for that!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI know\u201d, he said, turning around and going back in our bedroom.<\/p>\n
Sometimes when I was bored and felt like it, I would wrestle David to the ground on his stomach, sit on his back and pretend spank him. I mean I really spanked him, but he knew it was for fun, I wasn\u2019t REALLY mad at him. I would say that it was for all the bad things he did that I wasn\u2019t there to see, which was kind of stupid when you thought about it, just a really bad excuse to spank someone. But he seemed to actually like it for some reason, and I liked it too. From listening to our Smothers Brothers records so much, we both knew what sibling rivalry was, and how they made fun of it. So we liked to make fun of our\u2019s too. And since we were just doing it to be silly, I could tell him things I was really feeling and pretend like I was just making stuff up to spank him.<\/p>\n
I made David his sandwich first and put it on a plate. Then I called out to him that it was ready.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re not going to bring it to me?\u201d he called back from our bedroom. I laughed through my nose.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t owe you THAT much\u201d, I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cOkay, okay\u201d, he said, and came back out in the kitchen and took the plate, got a Tab from the refrigerator, and headed back towards our bedroom.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re not going to say thank you?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
As he continued to walk away not looking at me he shook his head and said, \u201cYou owed me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then I made mom her sandwich, put it on a plate with a little bag of potato chips, got her a Tab from the fridge and took it to her in her room. She was sitting on her big bed again just like she did at home with her back against the wall and her knees up, drawing on her sketch pad, just like David did when HE sat on his bed and drew.<\/p>\n
\u201cAhh thanks, Coolie, you\u2019re a sweetie\u201d, she said, \u201cAre you guys enjoying this rainy day as much as I am?\u201d I nodded.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s nice to be cozy inside\u201d, I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIT IS\u201d, she said, her eyes twinkling at me, \u201cI\u2019m just happy to have nothing that I HAVE to do. There\u2019s plenty of stuff to sort out when we get home, but while we\u2019re here I can\u2019t really do anything about it so why kill myself worrying about it until then, right?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat kind of stuff?\u201d I asked. Now that I was a big kid, maybe I should know about that kind of stuff.<\/p>\n
She blew air out of her mouth and said, \u201cWell for instance, I\u2019m trying to open my own bank account at our bank, but so far, they\u2019re saying I have to have your father cosign, even though we\u2019re not married anymore. I\u2019m a grown woman and I\u2019ve never bounced a check in my life, but I can\u2019t have my own damn bank account without your father\u2019s signature and having access to it too?\u201d I looked at her but didn\u2019t know what to say.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd friends of your father and mine in the academic world\u201d, she said, \u201cAs soon as they find out that we\u2019re divorced, they stop inviting me to their parties. We worked hard to be part of that community, that\u2019s one of the reasons we moved to Burns Park, because that\u2019s where many of them lived. But now I feel like I\u2019m being shunned, it\u2019s awful.\u201d I still didn\u2019t know what to say. There was so much I didn\u2019t know about, that was making me feel more like a stupid kid again.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd your father\u2026\u201d she said, but stopped before she finished the sentence and looked into my eyes and said, \u201cI\u2019m sensing you don\u2019t like it when I refer to your dad as \u2018your father\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
She was right, I really DIDN\u2019T like it, but I would never tell her something like that. I never wanted to say anything to her where we might get into a fight. I had seen and heard her fight with dad too many times, and I always hated it, like we were one of those broken families! She looked into my eyes and nodded slowly, like she could tell that was what I was thinking.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sorry sweetie\u201d, she said, \u201cThough he\u2019s not my husband anymore he\u2019s still your dad, and I\u2019m your mom, and the two of us are still your parents. So when I refer to him, I\u2019ll do my best to call him \u2018your dad\u2019 and not \u2018your father\u2019, okay?\u201d I nodded, but felt like a little kid. When you talked to mom she just took over sometimes.<\/p>\n
I pointed to the bathroom door behind me and said, \u201cI want to get back to working on my game.\u201d She nodded, and for once didn\u2019t say anything. I walked into the bathroom and shut the door to her room and went back to my game on the kitchen table.<\/p>\n
So I sat down at the table to play my game, even though I was still thinking about what mom had said. The things mom had to worry about sounded BAD. I mean me and the other kids my age would get older but we would never be grownups like mom and dad were, we would be completely different. I wasn\u2019t sure HOW we\u2019d be different, but we would somehow. And the way the way older kids that played music and sang songs, like the Beatles, the Association, Johnny Rivers, the Supremes, the Vandellas and Smokey Robinson, they had all KINDS of problems too that they sang about. Problems with girlfriends and boyfriends, problems with being in love, and worrying that your girlfriend would cheat on you. It all seemed so much more complicated than just having friends, good friends like Mike and Molly, if she still really was my friend anymore, I wondered.<\/p>\n
Starting to put the American units on my gameboard to set up their defense, I realized that I had made a big mistake. My units were the same size as the squares on my board, so each covered the entire square so you couldn\u2019t see what the square\u2019s terrain was under the unit. And when I set up units on squares next to each other they got all pushed together and bumped into the units next to them making it look kind of messy. If I could do it over again I would have made the squares bigger, maybe like three-quarters of an inch, instead of half-inch like the units, but I\u2019d done too much work already on my board, and I didn\u2019t think David would give me four more pieces of his paper.<\/p>\n
So I tried to stop thinking about all that other stuff, and thinking about my game instead, though I was still mad about not making my mapboard squares bigger. I set up the defending blue American units, maybe a little more than half of them on the right side of the river that had most of the cities and the main road along the river. When you\u2019re the defender, you try to set as many of your units up as possible in places where their combat factor gets doubled on defense, like in cities, on top of ridges, in forests, or behind rivers.<\/p>\n
Setting up the best possible defense was the part of my real wargames at home that I usually liked the best, imagining I was the general staring at the map and telling all my unit commanders where they should be defending and why. Even if I was setting up the badguy Germans, like in D-Day, it was still fun.<\/p>\n
In the middle of my defensive position was the big river you couldn\u2019t move across or attack across, except across its bridges, and there were only four along its whole length. One at the top of the board along a road that the Germans controlled. One at the bottom of the board at the big port city, \u201cPort Lonheim\u201d, along the sea coast. And two in between, by the cities of \u201cChalkburg\u201d and \u201cFeldstein\u201d, currently both controlled by the Americans. They would want to keep control of those two bridges as long as possible to make it easier to move units from one side to the other of the big river.<\/p>\n
I had made about half as many units for the Americans as the Germans, but when I\u2019d set up all those units, I realized that they didn\u2019t have enough to cover their whole front line. So I made some more, mostly infantry, and put those on the board so I had what seemed like an okay defense. I looked at my setup, and figured maybe I needed a couple more units protecting that first bridge south of the front line at Chalkburg, but I wasn\u2019t sure where I could take them from without weakening other positions along the line. I made some final changes and decided I was done.<\/p>\n
Then I became the German general. I looked again at where all the American units were placed, and tried to figure out what was the weak point, if any, in their defense. My first thought was to put almost all the German units on one side of the big river and just enough on the other side to hold that part of the front line. But then I figured, like in Battle of the Bulge, I should attack weak points on BOTH sides, and adjust my overall attack plan depending on how those attacks went. Then I would focus on both sides of the river on trying to capture that first bridge south of the front line. So I spent more than an hour figuring out where and setting up the German units until I finally had what seemed like the best possible attack.<\/p>\n
So the Germans moved first and I continued to play the game for the next couple hours, making more units for each side as reinforcements when they needed them. The Germans had taken Chalkburg and finally Feldstein too, and with what they had left of their army, got close enough to Port Lonheim to launch an attack on the city. I picked a \u201c1\u201d from the cup for my dice roll, which was the worst roll, and they had to all retreat two squares. Since the defender got to say where they retreated to, they got retreated in a way that made a hole in their line. Then it was the American\u2019s turn and they moved through that hole and surrounded and attacked some of the big German armor units that had led the attack on Port Lonheim. A good dice roll, forcing the surroundedGerman armor units to retreat, would destroy them and probably save the port city which was the key to winning the game.<\/p>\n
But I picked the \u201c1\u201d AGAIN from the cup, and all the Americans that attacked the German armor units, which included the ones defending Port Lonheim had to retreat. The Americans had to retreat out of the port. The Germans were probably going to win.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t want it to end that way, so I put the \u201c1\u201d back in the cup, shook it, and picked another number. That one was \u201c4\u201d, which meant the Germans had to retreat, which they couldn\u2019t because they were surrounded, so they were eliminated. If I had been playing against somebody else, it would have been cheating, but since it was just me, I could do whatever I wanted, and make the story come out the way that I wanted it to.<\/p>\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I woke up to that less bright softer light coming in the small window in our little cottage bedroom and taps of rain on its glass panes and the roof above. David was sitting in his bed drawing on his sketch pad, noticing I was awake. \u201cIt\u2019s raining\u201d, he said, \u201cI don\u2019t think we\u2019re going […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[1777,13,1774,1773,1799,1800,1775],"class_list":["post-7945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adventure","tag-1960s","tag-ann-arbor","tag-autobiography","tag-childhood","tag-free-range-kid","tag-growing-up","tag-memoir"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t